


Dead in the Water

by thetidesisrising



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Character Study, Clint Barton Needs a Hug, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-07
Updated: 2019-05-07
Packaged: 2020-02-27 19:40:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18745765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thetidesisrising/pseuds/thetidesisrising
Summary: "In dreams he could see Natasha, hold her, utter over and over again how much he loved her. In reality there was nothing but deep-rooted despair, malicious in its growth."or, Clint Barton, after Natasha.





	Dead in the Water

**Author's Note:**

> Please note that this contains major spoilers for Endgame, so if you haven't seen it yet, don't read!!! I haven't written for these guys in a while, but I have a ton of ideas at the moment so I will definitely be back :) Title and lyrics at the beginning and end come from Dead in the Water by Ellie Goulding, which is surprisingly apt for these two. Please enjoy and review!! xoxo

_“If I was not myself_

_And you were someone else_

_I’d say so much to you_

_And I would tell the truth.”_

-

The dreams began the second night.

There, in the dead stillness of the night with Laura occupying the space beside him, Clint dreamed of drowning. Ink black liquid engulfed him as he flailed against his inevitable descent – sinking farther, faster – ensnared by slippery tendrils of jarring agony. He thrust his arm upwards, opening his mouth in a silent scream as Natasha drifted above. The surface slipped away – Natasha’s hair melted into the surrounding fluid until his eyes burned with red.

_“_ Tasha _,”_ he croaked, tears obscuring the red into a burnt orange.

He was so close, her fingers trembled before him. If he could only just reach her…

The tide receded, the roar of the tumultuous tsunami mounting as it reached its crest

“ _Clint_!”

He jolted awake at the desperate yell, eyes darting as his chest heaved. He could feel soft fingertips lightly stroking the pressure points on the insides of his arms, shrouding him in warm security. He exhaled shakily, his head lulling back in profound relief.

“Tasha, thank god.”

The fingertips froze and his breath hitched, a resounding sense of horror rapidly encroaching upon his wary heart.

“I’m sorry Clint.”

Clint stilled, his expression stone. His eyes bore into the opposite wall, discerning the stringy grays amongst the backdrop of soulless black. The dusty filaments reminded him of ash – how easy it would be to drift away in the eternal embrace of wind.

When Nathaniel ran in to find him the next morning, Clint was still staring at the wall.

-

The dreams continued for another week before Laura called Wanda.

He had yet to leave the bed, begging Laura to allow him to sleep. In dreams he could see Natasha, hold her, utter over and over again how much he loved her. In reality there was nothing but deep-rooted despair, malicious in its growth.

Wanda was the only one who truly understood. She was young and made of ivory bone, but her aura sang a siren’s song of inscrutable loss.

Most days they would wander through interminable golden fields, soulless and searching, till they reached the woods. There, under a canopy of verdure, they would dip their feet into a muddy stream, the water cool and oozing against calloused and cracked feet. On this particular day – though it could have been any, time moved sickeningly slow, he often felt suspended with aching fervor yet sealed within a hallow void – the air was eerily still, humidity sinking down upon them with molasses-like intensity. Wanda flexed her foot, mud slinking between her toes, and exhaled in frustrated peace. She appeared harrowed, weighed down by profound despondency. There was a light gleam of red in her eye and with an agonizing jab, Clint was struck by how much she resembled Nat when he found her in Budapest all those years ago, coated in crimson blood and curled up on herself like a conch shell, driven to mad nothingness by the crimes she had unwillingly committed.

“It’s hard for Laura to understand,” Wanda said, lulling her head to the side.

Clint glanced at her, furrowing his brow in feigned confusion.

Wanda laughed humorlessly, her lips curling into a slight smirk.

“The two of you were always in denial. I asked her about it once, you know.”

Clint stilled.

For the first time since Thanos, Wanda looked mildly intrigued.

“It was a couple of months after Sokovia. She was cold to me at first, and I think it’s because I was able to see right through the play she had written for herself; the crafted romance with Bruce entertained me. It soon became apparent that she was pinning after you. The night after you left to go back to Iowa I couldn’t sleep, so I went into the kitchen to make some tea. She was sitting at the island sipping a coffee, shrouded with sadness and longing. I asked her why she still sought you, and at first she seemed like she wasn’t going to answer, but after a moment she said that your love for each other was nuanced in a way only those who have sinned repeatedly can understand.”

She paused, glancing down at the top of her foot contemplatively.

“I couldn’t figure out what she meant at first – I don’t take you as an adulterer – but now I think that she was talking about your missions.”

Clint nodded slowly but otherwise remained still. Wanda was perceptive, and while her powers gave her access to the emotions and thoughts of others, Wanda hardly utilized them outside of combat. She was correct in many aspects of her analysis: Natasha always loved Clint. Clint knew this, the knowledge was ingrained in the ethos of his soul, but that is not where the story ended.

Here was the secret branded upon his heart: Clint loved Natasha too – incandescently and unconditionally.

Laura knew, of course, and it was a testament to the strength of both women that they were able to work out a situation befitting to all. Clint was by his very essence a dichotomy – irrevocably split in two between the family man he craved to be and the assassin he became. He met Laura when he was very young; she symbolized his lifelong dream to avenge his disastrous childhood – how he craved to nurture a family freed from the plagues of alcoholism and domestic violence. When he was in the circus he would lay on bales of hay at night and imagine the oft-dreamt dream of domesticity with Laura at the center of it all. Even after Clint joined SHIELD – the assassin slowly usurping the boy he once was – he remained consumed by his childhood dream. He gave his childhood home to Fury to use as a safe house, and when he returned to the dusty town, Laura was there, unchanged but in age. For three years Clint lived peacefully, until he returned from Budapest with a broken Natasha lingering behind him.

Natasha encompassed everything that Laura was not. Where Laura was soft and tender, Natasha was hard and blunt. Laura was a tranquil refuge among the fury of Natasha’s bloody storm. But where Laura was understanding of the nature of Clint’s work, she did not comprehend, not could she fathom, the acts he committed. She could not sooth the terrors that infected his sleep – she could not provide the assassin any sense of comfort, only the man. Natasha, however, was jagged and bleeding – she was an open wound infected and dripping with the disease of killing. She left blood-red footprints of desolation in her wake, yet she was also passionate, intelligent, and paradoxically good. Clint had never known another woman like Natasha, an enigma with infinite encrypted layers for him to decipher, and before long he found himself lost in the sweet, hellish shape of her. Clint the man could not live without the dream, but Clint the assassin could not live without Natasha.

The three parties reached an understanding, and against a foundational environment which tended to brew jealousy and ruin, the two women became close friends. Laura respected Natasha for taking care of the man she loved, and Natasha respected Laura for fulfilling Clint’s dream in a way she never could.

As the kids aged, however, Natasha grew alienated. Clint could feel it too – he knew every shade of her mood and every tick of her jaw. She stopped lying beside him at night to stay the nightmares, and she pushed herself further and further away, partnering up with Steve when given the option. Clint was devastated, he tried to compensate for her distance by drawing her further in, and soon enough his children called her “Auntie Nat.” But this was to no avail; his retirement from SHIELD only furthered the wedge between them, his decision to name Nathaniel after her a last-ditch effort to maintain a semblance of the easy friendship they once had.

His time spent at home soothed the ache of her absence, but the tension between him and Laura mounted. Both were accustomed to the smooth interactions that Natasha cultivated, and at first it was almost as if they could not function as a unit without her. Still, time trickled by and they recovered, but Clint continued to nurse the wounds left by Natasha’s absence.

Clint thought he knew pain after the snap.

Laura and his children’s deaths seeded a vengeful pain deep within him, and his time spent as a vigilante reflected that. He thought he knew hell when he met Natasha, but she was long faded into the depths of his brain now, driven to sheer loneliness by the force of his grief.

Natasha’s death shattered his understanding of hell.

Natasha’s death drained the world of all color, noise, and smell. Clint remained entrenched in a vast chasm at ground zero, one which Laura, with all of her warmth and persistence, could not pull him from. For as much as Clint strove to be the family man, Natasha’s sacrifice revealed the truth: Clint was an assassin foremost, but firstly he was a man loved by Natasha. Natasha, with her resounding cleverness, knew this, but she loved him too much to refuse him the chance to recover his lifelong dream, and for that, Clint loved her with every fiber of his being.

He was never able to tell her before –

Wanda hummed a low drawl, reviving Clint from his musings. She regarded him with an almost ancient sorrow, and Clint began to feel suffocated, as though the muddy water would slosh up and swallow him whole.

“Do you want to head back?” Wanda asked, omniscient.

Clint rose slowly, and together the two children of death drifted back home.

-

_“I’m dead in the water_

_Still looking for you_

_I’m dead in the water_

_Can’t you see?”_


End file.
